


Three Strikes

by LSPrincess



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Pre-Canon, Pre-Infarction (House M.D.), Pre-Slash, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-14 22:55:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29549631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LSPrincess/pseuds/LSPrincess
Summary: “So,” House continued with little preamble, “crushing the plot map and to Hell with the subplots, the ‘big takeaway’ is that you’re exhausted. You need to relax.” With some shuffling and seemingly excessive rustling, he extracted from his satchel a slightly crushed and crudely fashioned water bottle bong. “I can help with that.”-Wilson needs to calm down. House proposes a solution.
Relationships: Greg House & James Wilson, Greg House/James Wilson
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	Three Strikes

**Author's Note:**

> Whenever I join new fandoms, I always write something small and very studious. This is that! I love House, and I _adore_ Wilson. Here's some shenanigans!

“As it turns out, an 11-year-old with acute lymphocytic leukemia _can_ crack a smile at a piss-poor joke. As it turns out, a mother of three with twelve neuroendocrine tumors on the liver can still hold strong, stand tall, and walk out of my office with a gleam in her eye. As it turns out, a man with a melanoma on his _retina_ can almost seem _giddy_ at the prospect of wearing an eyepatch.”

“As it turns out, you muse aloud.”

Yes. As it turns out, Gregory House just _likes_ James Wilson’s company. Likes to lounge in his stiff desk chair and spin idly while Wilson paces the floor. Likes to balance pencils on his lips, likes to sort paper-clips by color and size, likes to spin quarters and bottle caps to see if they’ll break the rectangular barrier of pens he set up. He likes to _talk_ more than he likes to listen, but fidgets like that either meant he was focused or bored. Wilson liked to believe the former and to attribute it to his… _musings._

“And as it turned out _long_ before our epiphany of turn-outs, James Wilson works his sorry little ass off at the job no _masochist_ would want.” When the bottle cap wobbled and landed upside-down, House clapped a hand over it and swore under his breath. It was nowhere near the barrier. “I’m guessing pseudo-masochist,” he quipped with a shrug. He replaced the bottle cap with a quarter fished from his pocket and tried again. “The treatments, the prognoses don’t bother you, but _gosh,_ the _looks_ on their faces when they turn to you as their one ray of hope to break apart the rain clouds.”

“I like helping people,” Wilson huffed, flipping idly through the clipboard he clutched in his arms. Treatments, prognoses, patients’ names scrawled in his messy script. He narrowed his eyes at the leukemia one — lymphocytic. 11-year old. Her name was Adrianna Clark. He could remember the way she smiled and that pure, childish giggle. He could remember the glossy sheen over her parents’ eyes, how they looked at him.

With a scoff, he dropped into one of the chairs opposite House and tossed the clipboard onto the desk. The chairs were uncomfortable — rough fabric and lumpy stuffing — but only when he slouched and felt the strain on his back did he envy House’s position in his desk chair.

“I like _helping_ people,” he reiterated, conceding that House’s antics were more out of boredom than of a keen ear. “I like making them better.”

“Maybe it’s a God-complex,” House said off-hand, stopping the unsteady teeter of his quarter with a strong slap before it could disappoint him yet again. “If you like helping people, work retail. Or pharmaceuticals, if you’re really that _keen_ on the medical field.”

“I didn’t go to medical school to fill bottles in the cold back rooms of a pharmacy.”

“You didn’t go to medical school to sit and mope about treating people, either,” House sneered. He readjusted the pens and reset the quarter. “You didn’t have to go to med school at all.”

When he set the coin off on its hectic dance, Wilson chose to watch it instead of rolling his eyes at House. It was a simple blur of grey, likely scratching the varnish off his desk with every gradual glide toward one of the pens, but it was simple enough to put his mind off the clipboard. It was _just_ interesting enough to make him sit up a little straighter.

This had to be one of the best runs yet — the coin was still spinning, and excitingly, was moving ever-closer to the eastern barrier. Just when Wilson thought it would strike it and flip, House caught it between his thumb and forefinger.

“What the hell?” Wilson protested, hating how genuinely upset he sounded. “It was so close! I thought your whole goal was to get it over?”

“It caught your attention,” House said with a grin. “I’ve gotten it over three times before. I was just waiting for it to catch your eye.”

Wilson started, eyeing the coin and its area of captivity warily. He really hadn’t noticed. Though, he thought with a frown, he _had_ been relying on House’s potential exclamation of joy to signal that he’d succeeded in his Olympic coin flip.

He turned to House with a glare just for his troubles.

“So, you’re trying to make some big point about this? Some great big takeaway?”

He wasn’t expecting such a smug smile from House. It deepened his frown even more.

“Oh, Jimmy. Always looking for the moral of the story. I bet you _loved_ theme exercises in English Lit.” 

“Actually, my favorite was _rhetoric,”_ Wilson griped. “What’s your _point?”_

House shoved the pens out of the way, destroying his meticulous prison with one haphazard swipe of his hand. He flipped the coin once for good measure (checked the result surreptitiously; cringed in Wilson’s direction) before tucking it back into his pocket.

The rapid deconstruction of his desk-sized playground meant he no longer cared for shenanigans, which meant he was no longer in a shenanigans mood…which meant he was _serious._

House was rarely serious. He didn’t like the severity of it all.

For all he was aloof and frowned upon naivete, he seemed to opt for a playful sort of optimism. He would strap a lamp to his head if it meant he could avoid acknowledging the dark side of things. It made the job easier for him — to live carefree of the death and pain and sorrow and stalk blindly (and blindingly bright) along his path.

Wilson found that if you ventured to the dark, you could always turn to look at the bright. He didn’t need a rule-defying headlamp to light his way. He didn’t _want_ it.

House settled back into his place, folding his hands on the desk and schooling his expression into something comically stern. Even in all seriousness, he couldn’t be serious.

“You’re exhausting yourself,” he said simply.

Wilson laughed; scrubbed a hand over his face.

“Six months into the promotion,” House stressed with an exaggerated hiss, “and you’re wearing yourself down to poor, frail little bones. The brink of breaking.”

“Yeah,” Wilson scoffed, “the brink of breaking _down._ It’s a stressful job, House. It’s a _tiresome_ job. It’s an emotionally exhaustive job. So—So I’m a little tired.” He shrugged. “So what? So I-I-I work restlessly, so I don’t notice when you score coin-over-pen-flip. The job demands my attention. It demands my utmost involvement, it demands my care, it demands my empathy—”

“Oh, _empathy,”_ House groaned, cringing at the word. “To Hell with your empathy. If you’re still running your diagnoses off of _empathy,_ you’re six-feet under before your second week. You’ll drive yourself to an early grave you poor, empathetic bastard.”

“I get that it’s easy for you to disconnect,” Wilson started. And honestly, he did — he understood that. But he couldn’t emulate that. He admired it — he didn’t want it.

“Not disconnect,” House interrupted with a protestant finger, “distance. Distance is key. I don’t go blindly to patients to tell them they’re dying — I don’t go blindly to patients _ever.”_

“You don’t _go_ to patients at all!”

“And from my office to their bed, there’s _distance,”_ he explained, mocking the spacing with his hands. “You live on your patients’ shoulders — you’d live _with_ your patients if you could. You get too involved. You move into their heads, and you make yourself a cozy little retreat, and you _stay there._ We can’t do that.”

“Speaking for…the entire oncology department?”

“Speaking for the whole damn hospital if I can,” House hissed. “We cannot get that involved with patients. It _hurts.”_

The grim shadows lining House’s expression told Wilson he’d turned off his headlamp. It made him…serious. And Wilson didn’t like it. He turned away with a sigh, staring out the window at the distant Jersey traffic.

They’d known each other for only a year, and yet they’d already fashioned a familiar balance in their friendship, whether deliberately or not: Wilson handled the serious stuff, and House diluted it with his well-intentioned humor. Wilson could feed off of that humor, and they’d go back and forth, and it made his days brighter, made the weight on his shoulders just a little easier to bear. When House got serious, Wilson got lost.

“So,” House continued with little preamble, “crushing the plot map and to Hell with the subplots, the ‘big takeaway’ is that you’re exhausted. You need to relax.” With some shuffling and seemingly excessive rustling, he extracted from his satchel a slightly crushed and crudely fashioned water bottle bong. “I can help with that.”

If life were a cartoon, Wilson might have fallen out of the chair.

“House!” he cried, lunging across the desk to shove the bong out of sight. “Are you insane? Six months into this promotion, and I’m not losing it by getting _high_ with you!”

“Six months into the promotion and the bags under your eyes could carry ten pounds of potatoes without a frayed thread. Getting high might do you some good,” House insisted, resisting Wilson’s stubborn hands until he could set the bottle on the desk. “I already know you get in shipments of the good stuff,” he added with an insufferable waggle of his eyebrows. It was almost incentive enough to slap him.

“N-No! Just— _No,_ House. I’m not _dipping into_ my patients’ _prescription_ marijuana.”

“Oh, _‘prescription marijuana’,”_ House ragged. “I always hated oxymorons.”

Wilson couldn’t recall the last time he’d blinked, or the last time his brow hadn’t been reaching for the stars. “This isn’t happening, House. I’m not doing it.”

“You can’t relax? You can’t have fun?”

“Almost _never_ when it involves you.”

That at least dampened the fire in House’s eyes. “Oh, _you._ Always with the shallow jabs at my pride. This job’s gonna…hollow you out, wring you dry, and paint you as the next pretty face of dutiful good.”

“Yes!”

“You’ll be _boring._ I don’t abide boring companions. Cuddy’s always strict with new department heads, but you and your—” he grinned knowingly— _“charming_ smile and your _honest_ eyes and your goody two shoes, boy-scout honor had her fooled the minute you put on the puppy eyes and sat with a grieving widow. You have her _fooled,”_ he repeated, scowling at Wilson’s dubious frown. “You knitted a mile-long wool blind-fold for her. She won’t suspect a thing.”

Despite the reassurances, Wilson kept cutting his eyes to the door at his left. His brow had finally crashed from its atmospheric voyage to hang low and stern over dark eyes — his arms were crossed, his lip pinched securely between his teeth, and his foot was drumming out that tell-tale melody of moral anxiety.

“I know you like it,” House taunted in a sing-song voice. “Just _smell_ the thing.” He unscrewed the cap and waved it in front of Wilson’s face like some cheap perfume sample-card, which he swatted away petulantly.

“Bonnie will kill me if she smells it on me.”

The involvement of his wife’s metaphorical opinion during arguments could always turn House into a pitiful pile of temper-tantrum jelly. Even now, he sagged back into the chair with a theatrical groan, and Wilson rejoiced what little pleasure there was in that small victory.

“Dear God in Heaven above,” House said in a soft, almost puerile tone, steepling his hands below his chin, “please smite some sense into the good doctor’s brain so that he might partake in one of the many herbal miracles of your land.”

“God is not an enabler.”

“He is an opportunist, though. You could learn a thing or two.”

“Yes,” Wilson drawled, settling his hands on his hips. “I’d forgotten how the scripture stated, ‘Thou shalt miss the entirety of the shots thou dost not seize.’”

“Thou shalt piss off thy friend if thou persists with idiocy.”

“Thou shalt get me _fired,”_ Wilson snapped, snatching the homemade bong off of his desk and concealing it in his lab coat.

“Forget. About. Cuddy.”

“House, _Bonnie—”_

“Oh, _Bonnie!”_ House wailed to the ceiling, shaking his fists. “Marrying Bonnie cinched a square noose around your poor round neck. That lady’s got you whipped by a leash in her choke-hold.” He melted again, boneless but only partially defeated, slumping over Wilson’s desk and drumming his fingers along the blotter. “Bet she had you stress the fact of your inexhaustible loyalty in your vows.”

“You were _there_ for the vows.”

“I don’t remember,” he sighed, dismissing Wilson’s pursed expression with a wave of his hand. “Too many free-flowing emotions. I think one of those stained-glass cherubs winked at me.”

The arms were back across his chest, but mindlessly, Wilson cocked his hip this time, too — ever the image of a stern mother. “If I recall correctly, they ended with something like, ‘And to keep you, and hold you, and love you faithfully. Unless, of course, I were to run into my elder, Doctor Gregory House. He’s my allowance. I cannot account for all potential mischief at the hands of that wily dog.’”

“Blessed be, kiss the bride, amen, and hallelujah.” House threw his hands up in mock praise and shoved away from the desk. He pushed himself to his feet, always so tall and proud when he carried himself with intent, and strolled across the room to stand opposite Wilson. Oh, that devil-may-care gleam in his eye — it almost made Wilson want to smile.

With one swift movement, House swiped the bong out of Wilson’s possession (somehow effortlessly penetrating the fortress of his lab coat — Wilson was affronted), and they were right back to scowling at each other.

“Here’s your allowance,” House said, batting the bottle against Wilson’s chest. “Account for this. Or is this deal-breaking mischief?”

Even with the cap screwed back on, Wilson could smell the earthy, almost spicy aroma of the herb. The hypothetical pleasure of smelling it was dampened, of course, by the polluting odor of old, smoky water. It was a rollercoaster of emotions to get a whiff of the concoction — like his old college dorm room in a bottle. Even one of his professors had always carried the scent of it on her (the story was medical marijuana — she’d had a seizure in bed, dislocated her shoulder, very sad. Wilson hadn’t cared too strongly. Hungover on those off mornings, he was only ever peeved by the strained pace of her writing on the board. “Physical therapy was a grueling process” — by that, of course, she meant recreational use of medical marijuana and the affair she was having with the dean. Everyone knew it, and Wilson didn’t care too strongly. He was there to learn, not meddle).

“You’re doing that thing again,” House observed with a narrow gaze. “Stop it. Your critical over thinking leads to dumb choices. Instincts,” he said, snapping his fingers in front of Wilson’s face. “Me, bong, one gram out of your stash. Yes or no.”

Wilson almost protested to the amount proposed (out of _instinct),_ but given both their heights, his prior knowledge of House’s tolerance, and the quick fractional work of “the amount we steal” over “the amount I get shipped”, it seemed reasonable _(reasonable_ — you moron).

“I think I’m allowed a three-strike margin,” Wilson conceded hesitantly, chewing his lip red.

The smile that stretched House’s face was just enough to compensate for the anxiety.

**= = = =**

In half an hour, one gram had turned to two, and Wilson was sobbing on the balcony. It wasn’t a despairing thing — no crumbling in on himself, no wailing forsakenly to the skies. It was seeded more in all-encompassing, devastating anxiety that played his ribs like a xylophone of various choking cries. House had tried valiantly to shush him, that much was to his credit, but Wilson knew it was born of frustration and fear of being caught more than it was of genuine concern.

“Oh, for _God’s sake,”_ the older man groaned, dropping down next to Wilson, their backs against the balcony barrier. “Getting high is supposed to make you… _high._ Not drag you down to the pits of insufferable mopiness.”

“I’m so fired,” Wilson hiccupped, wringing his tie with tight fists. “W-W-What is Cuddy gonna say? What will she _think?_ I’ll lose my license, I’ll never get re-hired, I’m so _stupid—”_

“Yeah, you’re being a _moron,”_ House growled, leaning closer to Wilson to grit the words directly into his ear. “The boy who cried _‘sack’_ will be the boy who cried ‘dangerous fall from fourth-story balcony’ if you don’t _can it.”_

Wilson leaned into the harsh words, heedless of their sarcastic warning. He held his eyes shut against the onslaught of tears threatening to break the dam; he twisted his tie harder (practically strangling himself), and he _tried_ to control his breathing. He _tried,_ and that was always the keyword, isn’t it?

And then there was the sound of the balcony door, and there was that voice, and Wilson doubled over as House jumped to attention.

“What did you _do?”_ Cuddy inquired, and Wilson could _hear_ the hands on her hips. He was about to confess, to open his mouth and let the rushing torrents break free, but House kept him folded over with a firm hand on his back and took the limelight for a response.

“Yo-yoed him in the nuts,” he said with a grimace. “We’re mourning the loss of future generations.”

“One of the nurses came to _my_ office with concerns because, and I _quote,_ ‘The new oncology head is wailing like a spanked infant.’ Now, given the unfortunate location of his office and your prior acquaintanceship, I could _only_ assume it was _your fault.”_

Wilson tried to rise against the pressure of House’s hand, grappling at another opportunity to sell his guilty plea but lost it to a rather commanding shove.

“Like I said,” House laughed with a shrug, “I chipped the King’s jewels. Damaged…family heirloom—it really is quite tragic. Would you like to join this hour’s session of grieving?”

“No,” Cuddy drawled, her tone saturated with skepticism. “And you have the right to remain silent. Dr. Wilson, what is the matter?”

“Really,” House gasped, lunging to his side to add another hand to the resistance, pressing down on the nape of Wilson’s neck as he fought for verticality. “Really, truly, Dr. Cuddy, he’s _fine.”_

“Well, he’s obviously not — and quit that! Let him sit up, for God’s sake, House. This isn’t second grade, I’m not your teacher.”

“But you hold a rather similar position of authority—”

“Are you two _high?”_

It was unanimous, how the shock hit House and Wilson — how they froze in perfect synchrony. The pressure House was ruthlessly exerting on Wilson’s spine relented, but to a halting force. He froze as he was, folded at the hip, with burning, teary eyes flitting fitfully over the unsanded stone floor of the balcony. There was a fascinating variation of color present — a variation of size, of shape, of _origin,_ no doubt — and subconsciously, he chose to ponder these facts and defer the weight of Cuddy’s question to the elder doctor at his side.

And House _still_ wasn’t speaking.

Wilson heard one shift in Cuddy’s stance — one scrape of her heel along the stone — and braced for impact.

“Oh my _God—”_

“It was Wilson’s fault!” House exclaimed instantaneously, drawing back and shoving an accusational finger into Wilson’s ribs.

“Dr. Cuddy,” Wilson cried, flinging himself upright, “I am _so sorry._ I’m so, _so_ sorry, I didn’t want to! House, he—”

“Liar! How can you lie to her face like that?”

“—and gave a convincing argument about how much stress I can handle and how I-I _wasn’t_ handling it and how, if I wanted to do my job well, I just needed to—”

“Dr. Cuddy, most beautiful, powerful dean of medicine, _Wilson_ is high, I am not—in _any_ way—”

“—two grams! Just two, please, I swear, I’ll _never_ do it again—”

“Stop!” Cuddy snapped, effectively silencing them both, her face taut with exasperation. “You—Wilson—I cannot _believe—”_

“He seduced me!” House cried again, folding his hands like a beggar. “He seduced me, what with his outrageous good looks and _really_ high-quality marijuana—”

One hand was all it took to silence House that time — one hand and a pinched, murderous expression befitting a cross mother. Tears streamed freely down Wilson’s cheeks at the sight Cuddy made. Oh, how he was _fired._

“First of all,” she barked, and Wilson found some cruel comfort in feeling House flinch in sync with him, “can I just stress how _incredibly_ unprofessional this is. Not just getting stoned — _on the job_ — but doing it in an office so _central_ and then _crying about it—”_ she directed that statement at Wilson, shot him down with a glare that could wilt roses— “so _loudly_ that it drew _numerous_ people’s concern. Secondly (and you have House’s babbling confessions to thank for this, Wilson), the fact that you—and yes, I know it was _you,_ House—had the audacity to propose smoking _cancer patients’_ marijuana, and somehow _convinced_ Dr. Wilson to do it is beyond me.”

She shifted again, bringing her feet together and settling her hands on her hips, and scanned them both with icy, critical eyes. It almost felt as though they _were_ in second grade, and Wilson was sitting on his hands with his head bowed, just itching to bolt before the teacher called his name.

“I have more to say to you two, but given your current state, I’m leaving it at that for now. I want you to do anything—anything _legal_ —in your power to sober up in the next hour. I want you _in_ my office, _composed,_ and fit to give a lecture to the whole hospital. I want you acting like the good, _professional_ doctors I know you can be, and I want you to be prepared for a _long_ talk about ethics.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Wilson said through stuttering, hiccupping breaths, wiping at the sheen of tears on his cheek. House mumbled his own order of affirmatives, his head ducked like a scolded dog. Out of the corner of his eye, though, Wilson could see him scratching at the salt-and-pepper pour of the concrete floor, picking at the darker bits. And privy as Wilson was to the more complex machinations of House’s mind, he came to one conclusion that shocked him like a real volt.

House couldn’t give less of a damn if he had been _trying._

Cuddy muttered something under her breath as she turned to leave, swinging the balcony door open and shut and stomping her way through the darkness of House’s unoccupied office.

Wilson stayed as he was, gasping and wheezing through his tears, swiping at every one that slipped past his waterline and dripped onto the feverish skin of his face. Once he was sure the dull echo of Cuddy’s heels was only in his head, he hastily swallowed the next sob that threatened to peal past his lips.

It left them both in silence, eerie now after so long of Wilson’s monotonous whimpers. It was so abrupt an end to the tears, in fact, that House lifted his head, eyeing Wilson curiously.

He offered him a smile in lieu of an explanation, giddy somewhere deep in his heart to know how cunning it must look. Something flashed in House’s eyes, something akin to recognition, but the slow drop of his jaw belied true understanding.

“You’re a stone-cold bastard, you know that?” Wilson said, smiling wider. “How could you sit there, so _clearly_ disinterested, and feign contrition?”

“I’m…” House floundered, something new and uncharacteristic of his typical free-thinking wit. His mouth was hanging open, and it seemed he was trying for words, opening and closing like a poor, suffocated fish.

Clearly, he wasn’t _all there_ with this recent development.

 _“I’m_ the stone-cold bastard?” he settled with at last, blinking himself back to lucidity. “I’m not the one who sat here wailing for the past ten minutes as a…as a _ruse?_ What the hell was that about?”

“The nurses were sure to notice something. They’re gossips. Better they see the new department head all strung-out in his associate’s company than two slackers laughing on their shared balcony.” He just couldn’t stop smiling, and House, for all he prided himself on his suave hubris, couldn’t stop being awestruck. “What was that you said about my ‘critical over thinking’?”

House laughed breathlessly, _dubiously,_ raking his hand through his hair. “It leads to premeditated manipulation, apparently. You magnificent _bastard._ If Cuddy finds out, she might just fire you for getting away with it.”

“I’ve already screwed myself four grams in,” Wilson said with a shrug, settling back against the rail and dabbing at his swollen eyes. “Go grab one more to split between us, then we’ll make ourselves presentable.”

“Are you _stoned_ out of your mind?” House asked, almost genuinely concerned. “Did you miss that whole spiel through your ugly liar tears?”

“Are you _sobered_ out of _your_ mind?” Wilson threw back. “Since when do you care about Cuddy’s threats?”

“Since you stopped caring, apparently.”

Wilson scoffed and dismissed House with a limp wave of his hand. “One more gram. Unless you wanna make out?”

House snorted out a laugh and pushed himself to his feet. “Back up, buster. My inebriated brain might misinterpret signals and suspect you were coming onto me.”

“Married,” Wilson mumbled in weak protest, holding up his left hand so that the wedding band caught the waning sunlight.

“Girlfriend,” House returned. “And her ass is _so much_ better than yours.”

Wilson grinned conspiratorially. “Don’t knock it till you try it.”

“What is _up_ with you?” House asked with a shake of his head. He moved toward the potted fern in the far corner of the balcony, reaching behind it to retrieve the bong from where they’d haphazardly stashed it. “Weed loosens your tongue. It’s _dangerous.”_

“You’re speaking without _experience,”_ Wilson drawled, tracing the curve of his lips with his index finger and sticking his tongue out at House. “One more gram. Before we go kiss Cuddy’s feet.”

“We might just kiss more than that if you play your cards right, you dirty whore.” House swiped at Wilson’s hand as he passed him on the way to his office. “I get why Bonnie set such tight restrictions on your _fun_ -o-meter.”

“Three strikes,” Wilson reiterated, holding up the appropriate number of fingers. “If you play _your_ cards right, you might be able to cost me all three.”


End file.
